There is a saying,
“The greatest art resembles ignorance.”

The versatility shown in ingenuous arguments
and the efforts to blow off the dust
and reconcile different views is great,
but the common people are perplexed
by the sophistry.

Hence there is a prevailing disorder in the world
due to a fondness for knowledge.
All men know how to strive for knowledge they lack
but do not know how to seek what they already possess.*
They know how to condemn
what they disapprove of
but do not know how to condemn
what they have permitted themselves.

This causes confusion and disorder.
It is as if the light of the sun and the moon
above were darkened,
the strength of the hills and the streams beneath
were depleted and the cycle of the four seasons
came to an end.

Then
there will be
no small insect
or any plant
which has not lost
its true nature.

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou trans. by Hyun Hochmann, Yang Guorong, Breaking Open Trunks

One more concluding comment on this four page chapter which treats the subtlety and the consequence of plunder. We do not usually think of theft, let alone plunder as a subtle act. Granted that we fear violent and disruptive theft. It’s more difficult to identify a slower, more systemic plunder, especially if I am accessory to the normalization of a rip-off of myself.

The segment from the Zhuangzi begins with the statement; the pinnacle of art bears a resemblance to ignorance. The thrust of the point – that high art and ignorance share a quality! What could that be, we both ask? Having read almost halfway through the Zhuangzi I’d propose the author is pointing to the open-ended aspect of art-making and the art product. For example a painter has no more than a general idea of what he/she is to create, is bound to a reciprocal relationship between brush and pigment and canvas and ever changing light. It is a dance! And the outcome, when the creator judges “enough”!? The work stimulates (liberates) the viewer-recipient’s imagination in any number of directions. Ignorance is a condition of possibility, – of being in the presence of what one does not know. So also with art-making at the apex of excellence.

Zhuang Zhou makes a contrast with “knowledge” that is focused to a defined purpose. Are we not very, very fond of the knowledge that improves our odds of getting ahead? We honor the wordsmith virtuoso-lawyers who “wins” millions for their plaintiffs. Indeed the “spin” that is used to reconcile different (antithetical) views makes the head spin. You can hear these reports every day on television news. We are buffeted by a crisis of language that has been coming on for quite some time. “Whatever-it-takes” to get ahead is the rule of thumb for a sizable proportion of our population at present.

“Knowledge” that is of highest value forecloses one’s point of view. One is frozen into a defensive posture. One knows how to critique what one cannot understand. Not so well understood is how to gently exercise self-criticism, intuit fault lines in what we approve, have become settled with.

The long term, enduring cumulative effect of the expropriation of the critical faculty is widespread “confusion and disorder.” The Taoist writer uses the strongest language available: “as if the light of the sun and the moon above were darkened”. The effect is extensive. In the Taoist sensibility everything is reciprocally related. What I do or do not do, affects the cosmos. Enough of us can indeed darken the sun and moon.

On yes, I know you’d like to understand the reason for the title of the post. Put plainly, the Taoist admonition to nurture criticism of our desires would portend a dramatic abatement of holiday spending.

You and I
would be free
to be
more mindful.

Then, what is to be done? See above for the clue.*